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Devotees talk about ayahuasca’s cathartic and life-changing power, but there is a dark side to the tourism boom as well. With money rolling in and lodges popping up across Peru’s sprawling Amazon, a new breed of shaman has emerged – and not all of them can be trusted with the powerful drug. Deaths like Nolan’s are uncommon, but reports of molestation, rape, and negligence at the hands of predatory and inept shamans are not. In the past few years alone, a young German woman was allegedly raped and beaten by two men who had administered ayahuasca to her, two French citizens died while staying at ayahuasca lodges, and stories persist about unwanted sexual advances and people losing their marbles after being given overly potent doses.

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What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. I talked to more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.’s. Some were willing whistle-blowers, while others spoke reluctantly when presented with some of the thousands of pages of secret memos that I obtained from inside the food industry’s operations. What follows is a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

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Human Bones Found in Altar Bought on eBay

Police said they were pursuing a trespasser when they spotted bones atop the outdoor altar. Steer horns and other animal bones were visible, along with the human bones, candles and incense. “The religious aspect of the case is not our focus–it’s the bones,” said Pasadena Police Lt. Ed Calatayud. Human skulls indeed are listed for sale on eBay. On Monday, for example, one described as suitable for dental study was listed at $710. Jose said his sister practices Palo Mayombe, an offshoot of Santeria.

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For about 25 years, he worked as an OB/GYN at a medical center affiliated with Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Now, Johns Hopkins and Baltimore police say Dr. Nikita Levy illegally photographed his patients, and possibly others, without their knowledge. Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says, “One of the cameras that we can confirm is a pen camera. And there are other types that we don’t want to get into – again given the sensitive, sensitivity of the investigation. There were multiple cameras. I really can’t get into a number.”

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You, like everyone else who is alive and breathing, can be arrested right now by the U.S. federal government, charged with felony possession, then proven “guilty” of that possession because you do possess a Schedule I substance in your own brain. What substance is that? Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, sometimes called the “spirit molecule” because of its ability to allow humans to transcend states of consciousness. U.S. federal code, defines Schedule I drugs as: “Unless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity of the following hallucinogenic substances:” (1) 3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine. (2) 5-methoxy-3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine. (3) 3,4,5-trimethoxy amphetamine. (4) Bufotenine. (5) Diethyltryptamine. (6) Dimethyltryptamine. (DMT) (7) 4-methyl-2,5-diamethoxyamphetamine. (8) Ibogaine. (9) Lysergic acid diethylamide. (10) Marihuana. (11) Mescaline. (12) Peyote. (13) N-ethyl-3-piperidyl…

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The Miami Beach patrolman yearned for the ultimate score, his friends told investigators: to engineer an epic drug deal, one that would make him rich and allow him to leave law enforcement behind. They called it the “Coke Dream.” That dream is dead now, as may be Navarro’s police career. He was suspended last September without pay after being charged with racketeering and fraud in connection with a scheme to use phony paperwork to acquire luxury cars. But that might be just the beginning of Navarro’s troubles. Although for now he hasn’t been charged with anything else, the investigation into his actions has produced reams of damning documents detailing bungled trips to the Bahamas to buy kilos of coke, the rip-off of a suspected marijuana grow house, drunken brawls, a botched attempt to collect a drug debt and — perhaps most strikingly — his penchant for lending his police car, uniforms and other gear to meth-dealer pals.

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Party animals could soon be able to sober up in an instant just by popping a pill. Researchers have developed a cocktail of alcohol metabolizing enzymes that speedily reduces blood alcohol levels in drunk mice. The treatment, which has been compared to having ‘millions of liver cells inside your stomach,’ could have far-reaching implications for drinkers.

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So there were 8 hours a day of group or watching videos or lectures— and that has been found to be among the least effective treatments for alcohol problems. I really didn’t expect that much seat time. I visited outpatient treatment as well and some of those have no individual [sessions] at all or it is ‘as needed’ and even less than in the residential treatment. One of the things I found myself thinking as I was sitting in those programs was, ‘Whoever came up with a model where you take addicts and they are sitting for three hours or more three times a week or longer in group based treatment, talking about the program?’ That’s an awfully long time to just sit on your butt. I would ask, ‘Is there any evidence that this is effective?’ and no one could answer where it came from.

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Scientists at Swansea and Milan Universities have found that young people who use the Internet for excessively-long periods can suffer similar withdrawal symptoms to substance mis-users. In a study of Internet users, published online in the international journal PLOS ONE, Professor Phil Reed of Swansea University’s Psychology Department and Dr Lisa A Osborne of the University’s College of Medicine and Professor Roberto Truzoli and Michela Romano of the Università degli Studi in Milan, reported the results of the first study into the immediate negative psychological impacts of Internet use. Their research found that those who engage in long periods of use reported increased negative moods after they stopped surfing the net, possibly triggering them to re-engage in net use to remove these unpleasant feelings.

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China considered using a drone strike in a mountainous region of Southeast Asia to kill a Myanmar drug lord wanted in the murders of 13 Chinese sailors, but decided instead to capture him alive, according to an influential state-run newspaper.

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Trust salmon, maybe red snapper, but not canned tuna. These are the lessons a nervous seafood eater could glean from a new study by the marine-life advocacy group Oceana. A whopping 87 percent of red snapper and 84 percent of canned “white” tuna tested was found to be mislabeled, the study found.

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He said: ‘I remember that the police put a towel on my face so I could not see. They kept telling me I was going to die. I was so scared. ‘Once I had been knocked to the ground, the police picked me up and put me on the bed. They pulled down my trousers, spread my legs and started to electrocute my testicles. It was unbelievably painful. I was so scared. ‘Then they took off the towel and I could see there was a gun pointed at my head. I started to believe I was going to die in that room.’ Further torture took place in the desert, it was claimed, where the men were initially taken.

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you would have no way of knowing, but drug dealers have moved in and are running multimillion-dollar heroin operations in some of the area’s upscale neighborhoods. You, yourself, could be living right next to the new heroin house. “You never know what might be next door to you,” New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said.

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He said last night: “I was acting like a madman. I thought I was doomed. I thought I was going to die. “I picked my daughter up and she felt incredibly light, like a grain of rice. I suddenly had this compulsion to jump through a window. “My wife ran out and got my friends who had to restrain me.” He even began impersonating Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks routine. He was rushed to hospital and doctors said his drink was almost certainly spiked with LSD. Ben reported it to police.

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It’s the number one topic for internet searches, but do we ever consider how pornography can have lasting neuroplastic effects? Discover the hard science behind the ‘porn epidemic’ – the internet’s drug of choice.

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On Monday, an American cybersecurity firm called Mandiant released a report accusing the Chinese government of systematically hacking into American computer networks and targeting state secrets, weapons programs, businesses, and even the nation’s gas pipelines. The New York Times vetted the story and concluded that a growing body of evidence “leaves little doubt” that these attacks are originating from a secret Chinese army base. Adam Segal, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (an organization that, in the past, has also been targeted by hackers that appeared to be China-based), tells Mother Jones that this “raises the pressure on the increasing drum beat on the US to do something.” So just how freaked out do you need to be?

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The bill, called the Internet Posting Removal Act, is sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein. It states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.” The Democratic lawmaker’s bill, which does not ask for or clarify requirements from entities requesting the comment removal, would take effect 90 days after becoming law. Pseudonymous and anonymous comments have long been a critical part of U.S. public discourse, though, and the bill may be on shaky legal ground.

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The bill, called the Internet Posting Removal Act, is sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein. It states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.” The Democratic lawmaker’s bill, which does not ask for or clarify requirements from entities requesting the comment removal, would take effect 90 days after becoming law. Pseudonymous and anonymous comments have long been a critical part of U.S. public discourse, though, and the bill may be on shaky legal ground.

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If you smoke marijuana in California, there’s a chance you may have to wait a week or more before you can drive legally. A bill introduced last week by state Senator Lou Correa, a Democrat from Anaheim, would make it illegal to get behind the wheel if your blood contains “any detectable amount” of cannabis—a drug which, unlike alcohol, can persist in the blood of its users for a week or more after the psychoactive effects have worn off. “This bill would effectively outlaw EVERY driver who has within recent hours or days used marijuana,” California NORML director Dale Gieringer told the East Bay Express. Strict traffic laws are fast becoming the new front of the war on drugs. Ten states already impose zero tolerance requirements on pot smokers who get behind the wheel. Another four, including Washington, where pot is now legal, set a blood limit for THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, at a level low enough to convict some drivers who aren’t actually stoned.

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A Swedish court has ruled that a 28-year-old man who ripped off his girlfriend’s trousers and underwear to perform an “infidelity check” is not guilty of rape or any other sex crimes. The man had previously been convicted of rape by a lower court after he tore off his girlfriend’s clothes and forced his fingers into her genitals on suspicion that she had been unfaithful, legal trade publication Dagens Juridik reported. The lower court had also convicted the man of several other charges related to repeated assaults and threats directed against girlfriend in a relationship that had been marked by jealousy and suspicion. But upon reviewing the case, the Svea Court of Appeal threw out the rape conviction, arguing that the man’s actions weren’t sexual in nature. Both the man and his girlfriend testified that the act was an attempt to ascertain whether or not the woman had engaged in sexual activity with another man.

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A Whole Foods supermarket in New York has removed a sign that used a drawing of President Barack Obama to advertise a sale on chicken after complaints that the ad was offensive. The sign outside the supermarket on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, featuring an apparent caricature of Obama advertising an upcoming sale on whole organic chickens, outraged neighbor Woody Henderson. “There are certain things that have been used to put down black people — watermelon, fried chicken,” he said.

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But that’s when things quickly went in the wrong direction “Suddenly she stepped to the front of the group threw off her coat and stripped from the waist up,” said Lesko. Within seconds staff at the academy rushed the stage and the district says they ushered Meaders to the side and shielded her from the students while they waited for police. Looking back – Lesko says she wasn’t acting out of the ordinary before deciding she needed to shed some layers of clothing. “No behavior that anyone encountered during the assembly and she spent the time talking to the principal having perfectly normal conversation.” She was charged with seven counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child and one count of Public Lewdness.

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Leading Geneticist: Human Intelligence is Slowly Declining

Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But human intelligence is suffering for other reasons as well.

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Even by the standards of social media fiascos, this one’s a doozy. On Monday, Burger King’s official Twitter feed announced the chain had been sold to its rival and began posting pro-McDonald’s messages and tales of employee drug use. The strange Twitter activity took place after hackers apparently took control of Burger King’s account and replaced its name and image with the McDonald’s logo. Here is a screenshot of what followers of @burgerking saw on Monday:

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany. A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects. They apparently were getting high too.

Filmmakers, fans, activists, artists, and media makers have been reediting television, movies, and news media for critical and political purposes since almost the very beginning of moving pictures. Over the past century, this subversive form of populist remixing has been called many things, including appropriation art, détournement, media jamming, found footage, avant-garde film, television hacking, telejusting, political remix, scratch video, vidding, outsider art, antiart, and even cultural terrorism. The politically oriented mashup video subgenre has its roots in the rich and diverse history of left-leaning, often deeply antiauthoritarian, creative traditions. These transformative works, by their very nature, are suspicious of and challenge political, corporate, media, and social power structures. They focus on a wide array of issues, including race, gender, sexuality, and economics, in addition to more overtly political topics of government, public policy, and warfare.

A study of nearly 4,000 teenagers published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, shows that secondary school children who take methamphetamine (speed) and MDMA (ecstasy) appear to be prone to depression later on. The study results proved to be independent of previous bouts of depressive symptoms or other drug use. Speed and ecstasy first gained popularity amongst clubbers and people in the rave scene. However, both drugs have also become increasingly popular in the general population, such as secondary school children, who, according to the researchers, often take both drugs at the same time.

Cocaine may speed up the aging of the brain, according to new research that finds that people who are addicted to the drug lose twice the brain volume each year as non-drug users. As the brain ages, it inevitably loses gray matter, the part of brain tissue made up of neuron cell bodies. Loss of gray matter is linked with many of the signs of old age, including memory problems and other declining cognitive abilities, said study researcher Karen Ersche, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. Middle-age cocaine-dependent people show many of the signs of aging, including cognitive decline, Ersche told LiveScience. To look at the underlying cause, she and her colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure gray matter volume in 60 adults with cocaine dependence and 60 adults without substance-use troubles who were similar to the cocaine-abusing volunteers in age, gender and verbal IQ.

A friend of a man accused of stabbing his mother to death reports the alleged stabber, may have been on a hallucinogenic, called, ‘Psychedelic DMT’. Twenty-two year-old William Walsh remains in jail, charged with stabbing his mother to death at their home over the weekend. DMT is a very expensive illegal drug, hard to find on the streets. “You shouldnt take anything you wont be able to control,” said Brian Chambers with the Memphis Division of the US Drug Enforcement Agency. According to Chambers, Psychedelic DMT is such a powerful drug, it drives people under the influence to do things they wouldn’t normally do. “They start hearing things, they get paranoid, they start seeing things that aren’t there.” expressed Chambers. Powerful, vivid hallucinations aren’t the only side effects. The crystal that’s crushed and then, snorted, smoked or shot up, can cause users to become short of breath, pass out, even die.

A 30-year-old woman who died suddenly in 2010 drank too much Coca-Cola says her partner. Natasha Marie Harris, a mother of eight, died in February 2010 from a cardiac arrest, and her partner Christopher Hodgkinson told an inquest into her death yesterday that she drank at least 10 litres a day, the Otago Daily Times reports. When he found out in 2011 Coke could be the cause, he was irate and made threats to Coca-Cola. Medical records said Ms Harris died of a cardiac arrhythmia, which a doctor in court yesterday said could have been caused by excessive consumption of a sugary drink. Dr Dan Mornin said the consumption can cause severe hypokalemia, a lack of potassium in the blood which could lead to cardiac arrythmias. But Mr Hodgkinson said he had no idea a soft drink like Coca-Cola could kill her at the time. He said she drank it first and last thing each day and throughout the day, and vomited regularly.

Dangerous currents swirl around Sotobanari island, which has not a drop of natural water, and local fishermen rarely land there. But 76-year-old Masafumi Nagasaki has made this kidney-shaped island in Japan’s tropical Okinawa prefecture his retirement home, with an unusual dress code: nothing at all. Naked, he braves lashing typhoons and biting insects as a hermit in the buff. “I don’t do what society tells me, but I do follow the rules of the natural world. You can’t beat nature so you just have to obey it completely,” he said. “That’s what I learned when I came here, and that’s probably why I get by so well.” The wiry Nagasaki, his skin leathered by the sun of two decades on the island, worked briefly as a photographer before spending years on the murkier side of the entertainment industry. When retirement came, he wanted to get far away from it all. He chose Sotobanari, which is roughly a 1,000 meters across and means “Outer Distant island” in the local dialect.

The past few months have seen dozens of students and other protesters charged with major offences – particularly ‘violent disorder’, which carries with it a maximum five-year sentence. Many people, often in their teens and early twenties, have faced crown court trials and been sent to jail for the flimsiest of reasons – throwing a lightweight placard stick, for example – and their lives have been seriously compromised by the stress and humiliation of a trial (many of which take place over a year after the protest) and the shock of prison. At the same time, policing at protests has been heavy-handed, including the use of kettling, horse charges and batons, and police are pushing for ever more resources (water cannon, rubber bullets) to ‘control’ protesters.

The real grotesqueness isn’t in infantry soldiers taking a few war trophies. No, it’s the idea that’s been sold to the American public that war can be sterile. It’s the idea that 18-year-olds who have been ordered to kill people will never play with the body parts afterward. In this sterile world of war – one undoubtedly sold to the American public to ease their comfort with its perpetual existence – missiles are so precise they can avoid collateral damage, drones can narrow in on specific terrorist targets from the sky, and wars need to be neither bought nor paid for. Or something like that. The unfortunate reality is that war is messy. Missiles hit the wrong targets all the time. Drones accidentally kill women and children. And when 18-year-old infantry soldiers get their first confirmed kill, they high-five, cheer and take a photo.

This blog is by no means an advocate for the sale or purchase of illegal drugs. It is meant solely to provide a brief archive of a complex market and product that can often be dangerous. We believe strongly in the philosophy of HARM REDUCTION among recreational drug users and addicts alike. Information and education saves lives. Please be careful, everyone!

Location services company Navizon has a new system, called Navizon I.T.S., that could allow tracking of visitors in malls, museums, offices, factories, secured areas and just about any other indoor space. It could be used to examine patterns of foot traffic in retail spaces, assure that a museum is empty of visitors at closing time, or even to pinpoint the location of any individual registered with the system. But let’s set all that aside for a minute while we freak out about the privacy implications. Most of us leave Wi-Fi on by default, in part because our phones chastise us when we don’t. (Triangulation by Wi-Fi hotspots is important for making location services more accurate.) But you probably didn’t realize that, using proprietary new “nodes” from Navizon, any device with an active Wi-Fi radio can be seen by a system like Navizon’s.

A family outing to an Olive Garden in Indianapolis turned into a brief horror show this week after the restaurant accidentally served their 10-year-old son an alcoholic drink. The boy was taken to the hospital on Thursday. The child–who has not been indenified– had ordered a non-alcoholic Frullato Smoothie, but the waitress mistakenly brought him a 4-ounce cocktail, WISH-TV reported. After realizing the error, the waitress told the restaurant’s management, which informed the boy’s parents. The parents took their son to a local hospital, where tests revealed alcohol in his system. A police officer at the hospital described the boy as “alert” but “shaken up,” according to the local television station.

President Barack Obama is the drug brand of choice for many dealers. Since his election in 2008, the Commander-in-Chief’s name and face has been slapped on a wide variety of contraband products including ecstasy pills, LSD tabs, heroin baggies and a popular strain of medical marijuana.

Sure, it’s not that shocking that a few of these famous writers and actors dropped acid back in the day. But we were surprised to find out how some athletes, scientists and groundbreaking innovators used LSD and how profoundly it affected them personally and professionally. Watch the video about to learn about how some of our most culturally prolific leaders and artists used the psychedelic drug.

This is how I — a journalism graduate student with no background in forensics — became certified as a “Forensic Consultant” by one of the field’s largest professional groups. One afternoon early last year, I punched in my credit card information, paid $495 to the American College of Forensic Examiners International Inc. and registered for an online course. After about 90 minutes of video instruction, I took an exam on the institute’s web site, answering 100multiple choice questions, aided by several ACFEI study packets. As soon as I finished the test, a screen popped up saying that I had passed, earning me an impressive-sounding credential that could help establish my qualifications to be an expert witness in criminal and civil trials. For another $50, ACFEI mailed me a white lab coat after sending my certificate.

✪ A troubling trend in teens drinking hand sanitizer

The liquid hand sanitizer is 62% ethyl alcohol and makes a 120-proof liquid. A few drinks can cause a person’s speech to slur and stomach to burn, and make people so drunk that they have to be monitored in the emergency room. Doctors said this is the latest over-the-counter product that teenagers have adapted for a quick high. Teenagers have done the same with mouthwash, cough syrup and even vanilla extract. “Over the years, they have ingested all sorts of things,” said Helen Arbogast, injury prevention coordinator in the trauma program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “Cough syrup had reached a very sexy point where young people were using it…. We want to be sure this doesn’t take on the same trend.”

The best way to drink hand sanitizer is straight, like whisky, and down it “like a shot,” explains Tyler, a Grade 10 student who lives in Toronto. Undiluted, the alcohol-based liquid tastes a little like “vodka and bug spray,” he adds.

Chancellor Katehi, on her part, “thought she made it clear” that when police ordered the students to leave, they were (a) not to wear riot gear into the camp, (b) not to carry weapons of any kind into the camp, (c) were not to use force of any kind against the students, and (d) were not to make any arrests. But all that anybody else on that conference call heard her say out loud was “I don’t want another situation like they just had at Berkeley,” and Chief Spicuzza interpreted that as “no swinging of clubs.” Chief Spicuzza “thought she made it clear” more than once that no riot gear was to be worn and no clubs or pepper sprayers were to be carried. What Lieutenant Pike said back to her, each time, was, “Well, I hear you say that you don’t want us to, but we’re going to.” And they did, including that now-infamous Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer that he used. Oh, funny thing about that particular model of pepper-sprayer? It’s illegal for California cops to possess or use.

“This is the only court in the United States where you can plead guilty and still be given the death penalty, and it’s just another sign that the system is not set up to give anyone a trial it’s set up to give someone what appears to be a fair trial with a predetermined result,” Broyles said.* “It’s pretty clear to me that the public has lost interest in these issues,” Richard Kammen, a death penalty expert representing accused USS Cole attack plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, told TPM. “There’s certainly a lot more interest in Trayvon Martin, for example, than there is in any of the military commissions, with the exception being the arraignment for the 9/11 people. But the day-to-day stuff, which is really quite important, has drifted off peoples’ consciences.” Kammen called the reforms instituted by the Obama administration in 2009 “quite superficial” and said there are “huge, huge problems” in the military commissions system.

Watching pornography would seem to be a vision-intensive task. But new research finds that looking at erotic movies can actually quiet the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli. Most of the time, watching movies or conducting any other visual task sends extra blood flow to this brain region. Not so when the movies are explicit, the researchers found. Instead, the brain seems to shunt blood — and therefore energy — elsewhere, perhaps to regions of the brain responsible for sexual arousal. Turns out, the brain may not need to take in all the visual details of a sex scene, said study researcher Gert Holstege, a uroneurologist at the University of Groningen Medical Center in the Netherlands.

From the archives of British Pathé, a look at Burgess Hill, a one-of-a-kind British boarding school in which nothing was forbidden and students were “allowed to find out for themselves whether conventions are good or bad.” In other words, plenty of cigarette smoking, mod styles, R&B; dancing, abstract painting, and motorbike races. Based on the revolutionary idea that kids should be happy: Burgess Hill was a progressive boarding school in Hertfordshire, England in the 1960s. Run by a Cambridge graduate, it allowed the kids to do what ever they liked! We can’t quite work out whether this is the best or worst school in the world. Would actually be interesting to know what became of these kids.

And it was only when the police came knocking one morning that Jamie’s secret life was exposed. After identifying that someone in the house was accessing child porn, they took Jamie’s laptop away for examination. Jamie is only 13 — and he still hasn’t even kissed a girl, let alone had sex. Though he is only a child himself, the result is that he has been put on the Sex Offender Register, blighting his life for the foreseeable future. Even with intensive therapy, Jamie still suffers from deep shame — ‘as if it is written across my forehead’ — which has led him to fear he will never be able to form a healthy relationship with a woman.

✪ Israel’s top general says Iran unlikely to make bomb

Israel’s military chief said he does not believe Iran will decide to build an atomic bomb and called its leaders “very rational” – comments that clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment. Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz’s remarks, in an interview published on Wednesday in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper, drew little attention in Israel on its annual remembrance day for fallen soldiers, when political discourse is suspended. But they will add fuel to an internal debate on the prospects of Iran weaponizing its uranium enrichment program and the wisdom and risks of any Israeli military strike to try to prevent Tehran from becoming a nuclear power.

In order to gain stronger public perception of new crowd control technology, the US miltary has been showcasing a new weapon dubbed the “pain ray”. The system cost more than $120m developing the technology and was deployed in Afghanistan two years ago

A Bloomington man was attacked and knocked to the ground by a man who wanted to steal his bucket of fried chicken, police said. A 22-year-old man was walking home in the 500 block of South Park Ridge Road just before 1 a.m. Wednesday when he was confronted, police said. Sean M. Nelson, 24, demanded the man give him his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and began slapping and punching him when he refused, police said. The victim suffered a chipped tooth, red marks on his neck and a torn shirt, police said.

A father has been jailed for setting up a hidden camera in the bathroom where his daughters showered. The Adelaide District Court heard the 50-year-old man had developed an obsession with child pornography which he kept hidden from his family. Police raided his Adelaide home last June and seized more than 2,000 pornographic files from his computer. They also found edited movies of naked teenage girls which had been filmed by a small camera on a storage shelf in the family bathroom. The court heard the youngest daughter could be identified clothed in one of the videos but the naked girls could not be identified. Judge Geoffrey Muecke said the man denied those filmed were his daughters, but said they were of two of his daughter’s friends, aged 14 and 15.

A four-year-old Saudi boy shot his father in the head while playing with his gun at their house, reportedly after his parent refused to buy him a PlayStation video game console. ­After the boy and his father returned home from the shop, the man, in his forties, put down his pistol while taking off his shirt. He did not notice that his son had grabbed his gun and was playing with it before putting his little finger on the trigger. The father died instantly. Some media reports however suggest the death was an accident, although Arabic media has already labeled the boy the youngest killer in Saudi Arabia.

Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives – for up to six hours after their death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women’s rights of getting education and employment. Thanks Adam Tetzloff

Sergeant Gary Stein will be kicked out of the Marines for Facebook comments he made criticizing President Obama on a page used by Marine meteorologists. He’ll get an other-than-honorable discharge and lose most of his benefits, three months before his contract would have been completed. “I’m having a hard time seeing how 15 words on Facebook could have ruined my nine-year career,” he said. Stein posted, “Screw Obama and I will not follow all orders from him.” Service members are allowed to criticize political candidates, but not as representatives of the Armed Forces.

Four current and former Transportation Security Administration screeners have been arrested and face charges of taking bribes and looking the other way while suitcases filled with cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana passed through X-ray machines at Los Angeles International Airport, federal authorities announced Wednesday. The TSA screeners, who were arrested Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, allegedly received up to $2,400 in cash bribes in exchange for allowing large drug shipments to pass through checkpoints in what the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles called a “significant breakdown” of security.

President George Bush, President Barack Obama, and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney all work for the exact same handful of corporate-financier interests. While they vary in how they dress up their methods of carrying out what is essentially a singular agenda, there is glaring continuity from one administration to the next in a process analogous to a corporate spokesman presenting the agenda of the board of directors. Changing spokesmen doesn’t change the agenda of the board of directors. While the corporate media focuses on non-issues, and political pundits accentuate petty political rivalries between the “left” and the “right,” a look deeper into presidential cabinets and the authors of domestic and foreign policy reveals just how accurate this analogy is and who sits on the “board of directors.”

Even by the standards of New Agey, cult-friendly LA, Zeena Schreck had a bizarre and abusive upbringing at the hands of parents who made the devil more famous than he’s ever been. Zeena is the daughter of Church of Satan (CoS) founders Anton LaVey and Diane Hegarty, as well as the recipient of its first baptism. By 13, she had been completely indoctrinated by the CoS, received death threats regularly, and was pregnant. She went on to be ordained the CoS’s high priestess and spokesperson just as Reagan-era yuppies began to completely freak over tales of children being sacrificed in the woods by her congregation. Against all odds, Zeena managed to rebel against the self-absorbed zealots who raised her and left the church in 1990 with her husband, Nikolas Schreck. In 2002, the couple founded the Sethian Liberation Movement, a religious body that allows people to learn and practice magic without answering to an oppressive sect and helps free ex-cult members from their troubled pasts.

Locked in frozen vaults on Antarctica and Greenland, a lost world of ancient creatures awaits another chance at life. Like a time-capsule from the distant past, the polar ice sheets offer a glimpse of tiny organisms that may have been trapped there longer than modern humans have walked the planet, biding their time until conditions change and set them free again. With that ice melting at an alarming rate, those conditions could soon be at hand. Masses of bacteria and other microbes – some of which the world hasn’t seen since the Middle Pleistocene, a previous period of major climate change about 750,000 years ago – will make their way back into the environment. Once thought to be too harsh and inhospitable to support any living thing, the ice sheets are now known to be a gigantic reservoir of microbial life. Altogether, the biomass of microbial cells in and beneath the ice sheet may amount to more than 1,000 times that of all the humans on Earth.

But I’m wondering if focusing on the ew-gross aspects of “lean, finely textured beef” (as the industry calls it) doesn’t miss the bigger picture, which is that the meat industry’s very business model is deeply gross. Even if pink slime is purged from the face of the earth, the system that produces our meat and related products (eggs, milk) won’t be fundamentally changed. A while back, I identified something about meat production that’s “even grosser than pink slime”—proposed new rules that would privatize inspection at poultry slaughterhouses while dramatically speeding up kill lines. Here are four more.

‘The unidentified flying object, which bears no resemblance to anything ever spotted near the Sun, somehow manages to withstand the blazing heat thrown off by solar flare activity and the incredibly high temperatures emanating from nuclear fusion generated on the surface of the star. What is it?’ asked the site. UFO fans on YouTube have been highly enthusiastic about the object, with many claiming it as a definite ‘spot’. SOHO, the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, is a satellite built to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind.

UFO Near The Sun

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that would make it mandatory for all new cars in the United States to include black box data recorders from the year 2015, and would (among many other provisions) permit the IRS to confiscate one’s passport on the suspicion of owing taxes. SB 1813, called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP 21), passed in the Senate quite easily after heavy promotion from Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif., left). The bill is scheduled for a vote in the House, where Republicans are hoping to add a Keystone XL Pipeline provision before passage.

The discovery of what Chechen scientists believe to be dinosaur eggs is causing a ruckus among paleontologists. The sphere-like fossils were found on a construction site and the area has become a magnet for locals eager to look at the ‘dinos’. Workmen building a new road were blacking through a hillside near the Chechen border with Georgia when they came across what geologists described as a clutch of 60 million year old “eggs”.

But there is another factor that might be playing a role in the increasing rates of the disorder, one that has escaped attention: the military’s use of stimulant medications, like Ritalin and Adderall, in our troops. There has been a significant increase in the use of stimulant medication. Documents that I obtained in late 2010 through the Freedom of Information Act, and have recently analyzed, show that annual spending on stimulants jumped to $39 million in 2010 from $7.5 million in 2001 — more than a fivefold increase. Additional data provided by Tricare Management Activity, the arm of the Department of Defense that manages health care services for the military, reveals that the number of Ritalin and Adderall prescriptions written for active-duty service members increased by nearly 1,000 percent in five years, to 32,000 from 3,000.

Shakespeare said, “a rose by another other name would smell as sweet.” The residents in a small village in Austria with the unfortunate name of Fucking think a place that’s called any other other name would get less offensive treatment. Moves are now afoot to change the village name to something less distinctive. “The only problem is that we need all of the Fucking residents to agree to the name change,” Mayor Franz Meindl said –speaking literally, you can assume, and not colloquially, in a recent TV interview. “Everyone needs to agree for it to happen.”

✪ Penis removal not needed for man to become woman: Ontario tribunal

Under current law, even if a man transitioning to a woman had undergone hormone therapy, grown a pair of breasts and developed a higher-pitched voice, they are barred from changing their sex without written proof of a vagina. “Even though you could be presenting as a female full-time, you couldn’t get your birth certificate changed to show you as female unless you had the male bits lopped off,” said Kay Lockhart, a woman-in-transition based in Ottawa.

“I found 11 films showing my wife in indecent scenes with her lover….it was the first time I watched a porno film and I did this just out of curiosity,” Ramadan told Egyptian newspapers at his house in the northeastern province of Dakhalia. “She first denied it and accused me of being insane before I faced her with the films…she then confessed to be still in love with her boyfriend, saying he is as young as her and that I am an old man.” Ramadan said he had been happy during his marriage life until he logged on to that website. Newspapers did not say whether he decided to divorce her.

Plenty of cop “beat downs” can be found online, but how often does the officer who stops others from handing out the beating get fired for it? That’s exactly what’s happening to Officer Regina Tasca in the Bogota Police Department. Tasca’s dashboard camera captured her as she attempted to stop two officers from beating an emotionally disturbed young man. Just days after the incident, she was told she was being suspended with pay. A year later, her trial is about to begin as the Bogota PD seeks to fire her.

Here’s a simple math equation: T-shirts + abortion = controversy. Tensions ran high on Monday, after T-shirts reading “I had an abortion” were sold on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, WECT reports . The shirts were on sale as part of a book signing and discussion lead by abortion rights advocate, Jennifer Baumgardner. The shirts are meant to help destigmatize abortion and help people talk about their experience, according to WWAY. A few students protested the shirts by wearing some of their own that said, “I haven’t killed a baby.”

Students as young as 11 years old would be tested for use of marijuana, pills, cocaine and heroin under a proposal by a North Port charter school that wants to institute the region’s most aggressive student testing program.

“A host of previous studies have routinely shown that individuals with body piercings or tattoos are more likely to engage in risky behavior than non-pierced or non-tattooed people,” corresponding author Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of social behavior at the University of Southern Brittany, said in a journal news release. These risky behaviors include unprotected sex, fighting, theft and drinking. Educators, parents and doctors should consider tattoos and piercings as potential signs of drinking and use them to begin a conversation about alcohol use and other risky behaviors, Gueguen suggested.

Though a variety of companies today serve alcohol to employees, it’s still ad agencies who hold highest the gin-soaked torch. The ranks of liquor-serving firms have recently included J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Grey, and Mindshare. In New York, J. Walter Thompson has in its offices a 50-foot-long bar with pedestal stools that would put many a commercial bar to shame. “Yes, we have a bar,” says a spokesperson, “and it is frequently accessed. We think it incentivizes and enthuses employees. It’s generally used for off-hours consumption, but that’s not to say there isn’t on-hours consumption as well.”

Infographic

In the realm of private fantasy, the allure of sexual submission, even in its extremes, is remarkably widespread. An analysis of 20 studies published in Psychology Today estimates that between 31 percent and 57 percent of women entertain fantasies where they are forced to have sex. “Rape fantasies are a place where politics and Eros meet, uneasily,” says Daniel Bergner, who is working on a book on female desire to be published next year. “It is where what we say and what is stand next to each other, mismatched.” The researchers and psychologists he talked to for his 2009 New York Times article, “What Do Women Want?” often seemed reluctant to use the phrase “rape fantasy,” and in scholarly pieces, the idea makes even the chroniclers of these fantasies extremely nervous and apologetic. Even though fantasies are something that, by definition, one can’t control, they seem to be saying something about modern women that nearly everyone wishes wasn’t said.

The former heavyweight champion said that back in 2009 he was in a hotel room with seven prostitutes, a morphine drip in his arm, a pile of cocaine and a bottle of cognac when he began to feel paranoid. Convinced the women were trying to steal from him he started beating them up and threw them out – to stop them from ‘taking his soul’. Tyson said: ‘That’s when I realised it wasn’t just demons – it was the devil himself. ‘It was the lowest point of a very low life, but it was my own knockout punch to clean up life, get whole, get well – and I haven’t done anything in three years now.

The agencies launched an investigation earlier this month when a shipment from Brazil was intercepted at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. The packages, which police report were destined for Richardson’s apartment in Picton, contained drugs known as dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogen more commonly referred to as DMT, which is a natural compound found in many plants and shrubs. Prince Edward OPP officers assisted with a search warrant at Richardson’s apartment and seized an additional 40 kilograms of the drug. Combined with the packages seized at the airport, police confiscated a total of 120 kgs. Of the illegal drug. This translates to an estimated street value of $68,750 and equals approximately 13,750 hits of the drug, police report.

✪ Tazered man high on LSD dies in police custody, family seeks answers

However, his friend Amanda Nazarao said she and Salgado were on LSD when police responded to a West Miami neighborhood, early Friday morning. Salgado was reportedly naked and behaving in a strange manner. When police arrived at the scene, they Tasered the 21-year-old and restrained him. “They had no reason to beat him, they had no reason to Taser him. He was naked, he had no weapon on him, he wasn’t a threat to them,” Nazarao said. Miami-Dade Police released the following statement: “Upon the officers’ arrival, the male who was later identified as George Salgado became aggressive and violent towards the officers and they utilized their electronic control device.” The 21-year-old was transported to Larkin Hospital, where he later died. Nazarao said, “He looked over. He was like, ‘I just want to tell you guys that I love you all,’ and that’s the last thing he said.”

On a night the team curtailed beer sales in the upper deck, the Blue Jays also ejected a spectator dressed as a marijuana leaf.

When more than 400 25-years-old adults were interviewed, some showed signs of alcohol use problems, but their problems didn’t correlate to self-reported feelings of immaturity. When surveyed again four years later at age 29 and then again at age 35, subjects expressed different sentiments: individuals who showed signs of alcohol abuse or dependence also self-reported feeling immature for their age. “We interpreted our findings to suggest that, at 25, drinking is more culturally acceptable,” Winograd said. “Young adults are out at the bars with their friends and drinking is a bonding experience. They also view blacking out, vomiting and drunk driving as more acceptable because peers are behaving similarly. “But by 29, when many of their peers have settled down, individuals who still drink heavily may start to view themselves as ‘Peter Pans’ of partying, who never fully matured,” Winograd said.

Federal authorities have arrested eight men accused of distributing more than $1 million worth of LSD, ecstasy, and other narcotics with an online storefront that used the TOR anonymity service to mask their Internet addresses. “The Farmer’s Market,” as the online store was called, was like an Amazon for consumers of controlled substances, according to a 66-page indictment unsealed on Monday. It offered online forums, Web-based order forms, customer service, and at least four methods of payment, including PayPal and Western Union. From January 2007 to October 2009, it processed some 5,256 orders valued at $1.04 million. The site catered to about 3,000 customers in 35 countries, including the United States.

D.H. Peligro may hail from the wrong side of the segregated St. Louis tracks but after becoming the drummer of the Dead Kennedys and making his way into the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he has seen much of the world—including the dark side of addiction. Two years after a nasty relapse, Peligro is back with a new band (catch them at the Viper Room this Sunday night). He’s also now ready to tell the world what it’s like to be punk, black, and trying to hide a drug habit from Anthony Kiedis.

A smart-mouthed junkie/loser known as J.J. (George Segal) spends his days looking for just “one more fix”.

The woman was married to defendant Robert McClain, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, at the time of the vicious attack, and pretended to castrate her 23-year-old boyfriend as the husband watched, prosecutors previously said. Through tears, the woman told jurors that she pleaded with her jealous husband to stop his violent two-hour rampage in September 2008 for the sake of his career and their children, the Orange County Register reported. McClain didn’t listen, she reportedly testified, and instead beat her boyfriend to the point of brain damage and slashed his body with a knife. The unidentified woman said her enraged hubby tried to have sex with her, ordered her to have sex with the badly injured boyfriend and demanded the castration as a sick form of retribution.

In the UK in the 1960s an attempt was made to reduce fly posting (the illegal pasting up of posters). Warning notices were put up with the legend ‘Bill Stickers Will Be Prosecuted’. Waggish fly posters responded with ‘Bill Stickers is Innocent’ notices. The joke wasn’t new in the 1960s though. In a New York newspaper The Olean Herald, 1884, there’s a piece reprinted from the London Graphic: “A countryman named William Stickers, flying to London to escape from rural justice, was appalled at reading on a wall: ‘Bill Stickers Beware!’ He went a little further, but reading again, ‘Bill Stickers will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law,’ gave himself up for lost and surrendered.”

A five-story-tall cylindrical metal tank, 90 feet in diamater had burst. A two-story-tall wave containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses issued forth, traveling out in all directions like a shock-wave. The molasses spread across the city at an estimated 35 miles per hour. And it wasn’t just the sugary tidal wave that was so deadly; the tank ripped into sharp projectiles, and shot metal bolts from its sides like bullets. As the wave and debris crashed down Commercial Street, buildings were smashed to bits. Some were picked up by their foundations and floated away in the tide of molasses. Electrical poles keeled over, exposing live wires. A steel elevated train support beam was torn to smithereens. Molasses covered everything. According to a Boston Post article, “Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly paper.” It wasn’t just horses. The great Boston molasses flood killed 21 people.

A 10-year-old girl from Colombia gave birth to a baby girl via cesarean section, Univision’s Primer Impacto, reported. The girl hails from an indigenous tribe in the town of Manaure, a town in the Colombian Department of La Guajira.

Reginald Gill, 77, conned women into believing they had cancer and told one victim she could be cured if a man sucked her breasts. Thanks Jasmine

The trio allegedly forged a sect called Cartel who wanted to purify the world and reduce the population according to police spokesman Democrito Honorato, from the Brazilian town of Guaranhuns. They were identified as Jorge Beltrao Negromonte and Elizabeth Pires da Silveira, both 51, and Bruna da Silva. Police allege they intended to kill three women per year. Once at their home, it is thought that the women were killed and their “meat” was cooked and used as the filling in a pastry dish known as empanada, which was then sold to unwitting neighbours.

The Rape-aXe system consists of a latex sheath, which contains razor-sharp barbs. The device is worn in her vagina like a tampon. When the attacker attempts vaginal penetration the barbs attach themselves to the penis, causing great discomfort. The device must be surgically removed, which will result in the positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest

A Recording Chronology Of The Early Days Of Psychedelic Culture This is an attempt to chronicle all relevant recording events during the early years in which psychedelic culture and pop/rock culture coalesced. The timeline does not deal with events outside rock music, and contains no entries related to jazz, avantgarde, exotica, etc. It is subjective to a certain degree, and some borderline entries that are not necessarily “psychedelic” have been included just the same. The dates have been verified against quality sources as far as possible. Prior to the 1965-66 era, a selection of important items have been included.

NSFW Ketchup performance art

✪ Slayer Reign in Blood Red Cabernet Sauvignon Vintage: 2010

As much as you love your Hell Awaits and Reign In Blood, you have now found a wine to match the music. Slayer one of the hardest thrash metal bands ever and pioneers in their genre, have chosen Sweden as the launch market for their first beverage, Slayer Reign in Blood Red! The wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon from California, is as uncomprimising and tough as the band. After a couple of Seasons in the Abyss, the wine has an undisputed attitude and a soft nose of dark berry fruits with oak and spicy nuances. Good mouth feel with hints of fresh fruit and juicy, smooth tannins. Well structured and rounded with subtle notes of oak, showing true Divine Intervention. Best company for the wine comes as no surprise, enjoy it while headbanging, riffing or with food, friends and great music. Reign in Wine!

Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation’s second most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could spur a new wave of abuse. The new pills contain the highly addictive painkiller hydrocodone, packing up to 10 times the amount of the drug as existing medications such as Vicodin. Four companies have begun patient testing, and one of them — Zogenix of San Diego — plans to apply early next year to begin marketing its product, Zohydro. If approved, it would mark the first time patients could legally buy pure hydrocodone. Existing products combine the drug with nonaddictive painkillers such as acetaminophen. Critics say they are especially worried about Zohydro, a timed-release drug meant for managing moderate to severe pain, because abusers could crush it to release an intense, immediate high. “I have a big concern that this could be the next OxyContin,”

❑ Federal funding went to coffee enema study

A decade ago, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine helped fund a study with the National Cancer Institute of an arduous regimen for pancreatic cancer that is best known for frequent “detoxifying” coffee enemas. The research design pitted standard chemotherapy against a regimen developed by Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York City physician. In the study, volunteers on the Gonzalez protocol got coffee enemas twice a day. They also took dozens of supplements each day, including 69 to 81 capsules of pancreatic enzymes; maintained a strict diet; and engage in other “detoxifying” activities, such as “skin brushing.”

Imagine having the feeling that tiny bugs are crawling on your body, that you have oozing sores and mysterious fibers sprouting from your skin. Sound like a horror movie? Well, at one point several years ago, government doctors were getting up to 20 calls a day from people saying they had such symptoms. Many of these people were in California and one of that state’s U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein, asked for a scientific study. In 2008, federal health officials began to study people saying they were affected by this freakish condition called Morgellons. The study cost nearly $600,000. Its long-awaited results, released Wednesday, conclude that Morgellons exists only in the patients’ minds. “We found no infectious cause,” said Mark Eberhard, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who was part of the 15-member study team.

❑ Bonnie and Clyde guns bring $210,000 in Missouri auction

Two guns believed seized from gangsters Bonnie and Clyde in 1933 after a deadly Missouri shootout with police sold for a combined $210,000 at an auction on Saturday in Kansas City to an unnamed online bidder. The bidder paid $130,000 for a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, known as a “Tommy gun” in gangster slang. The same bidder paid $80,000 for an 1897 12-gauge Winchester shotgun.

One of our favorite subjects is the way marketers can use psychology to manipulate you into doing what they want (we don’t think “brainwashing” is too strong a word). We know what you’re thinking: You’re far too cynical to fall for the ads you fast forward through on your DVR or the little tricks employed by marketers and politicians to push your subconscious buttons. But are you sure? Because science has found …

Prosecutors say he got into an argument with his mother after she refused to call a friend to obtain skybox tickets for him to an upcoming Avril Lavigne concert. Lyons then hit Bolek with a cognac bottle, stabbed her repeatedly and poured chemicals like Tile-X, Drain-O and Rapid insecticide over her body. He was found several hours later at a Hooters restaurant.

Police arrested the driver of an SUV after he headed straight down a tunnel into the San Francisco subway system, causing massive delays during Thursday morning’s commute. Muni Metro spokesman Paul Rose told NBCBayArea. com in San Francisco the vehicle drove into a tunnel on Church Street shortly before 6 a.m. Thursday and headed east toward the Van Ness Station. The SUV stopped when it got stuck on the tracks, police said. Police say 40-year-old Scott Mitchell of Sebastopol, Calif., was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, failure to obey a stop sign and driving on train tracks.

The reason why is obvious: a 25kg plastic drum of benzocaine wholesales at £2750 from specialist suppliers, but one kilo of high purity cocaine powder – say 89% pure cocaine hydrochloride just off the boat from Colombia – sells at £50,000 in Scotland. So anyone cutting 1kg of coke worth £50,000 with 1kg of benzocaine worth £200 would get 2kg of half-strength product that gives a profit of about 60% on a single cut. Detective Sergeant Michael Miller, a drugs expert at Strathclyde Police, reckons cocaine is cut up to 15 times with benzocaine before it is finally sold in small plastic bags in pubs and clubs as £40 per gramme. Miller and colleagues at the Scottish Crime & Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) reckon the average purity of Scottish street level cocaine is now only 5%.

Man-made environmental catastrophes come in varying degrees of tragic, but none is as awful as when human action renders once-pristine land uninhabitable. It’s important to remember that while clean air, water and soil seemingly come for free, those resources require stewardship. Keeping that principle in mind, here’s our list of 10 places that have had to be abandoned because of environmental neglect.

Illicit drugs offer a high to adults and youth that comes with a dangerous price. Drugs like marijuana and cocaine cost people physically, mentally, and monetarily. When teens can’t monetarily afford drugs to give them a high, or are worried about using illicit drugs, sometimes they turn to getting their high from inhalants. These kids found that sniffing chemicals that are found in common products like household cleaners was an easy way to get their high. But one new study shows that it’s no longer just kids who are getting their high by “huffing.” A study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) revealed that more than half of the people who were admitted for treatment of inhalant abuse were 18 years and older. In the past year, 1.1 million adults used inhalants. In SAMHSA’s study, 52 percent of those admitted for inhalant abuse was aged 18 to 29, 32 percent were aged 30 to 44, and 16 percent were 45 and older.

A transient was arrested after police said he skinned and ate a cat while camping inside a Phoenix warehouse and music venue. Authorities say the building’s owners reported a burglary after they opened the warehouse Wednesday and heard blaring music. Police found 24-year-old Russell Christopher Hofstad inside with his face painted and the cat’s tail and intestines around his neck. Hunger claimed Hofstad told police he killed the cat because he was hungry. He also said he was going to use its skeleton as party decorations.

Authorities said Jeffrey P. LeBlanc, 31, of 18 Treadwell Drive, Spencer, told them he injected the child with the drug while babysitting for her on the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2010, because she had been ill the night before and he wanted to help her “feel better and relax.” He reportedly said he shot himself up with heroin first, then gave the girl a small amount of the drug.

Have you been dying to tell someone that their nose hairs gross you out? Do you find yourself facing them every day, unable to voice out your disgust? If your answer to these two questions is “yes” , Chololi is just the service for you. It allows anyone to email people anonymously, telling them that their pesky nostril hairs need to be trimmed soon. Originally launched in Japanese, the web service is now available for the English-speaking as well. To use it, all you need to do is go to their website and fill out a form. Provide the person’s name, e-mail address, the nostril through which the hair is visible, the number of hairs and you’re done! The message will be conveyed in secrecy. Just for kicks, you can even choose the tone with which the message is delivered. There’s mild, strong, commanding, and the nastiest of them all, scornful.

❑ Ohio wrestler gets 32 years in HIV assault case

A former professional wrestler was sentenced Monday to 32 years in prison for having sex with women without telling them he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Andre Davis, 29, was sentenced in a Hamilton County court on 14 counts of felonious assault. Davis, who wrestled using stage names including Gangsta of Love and Sweet Sexy Sensation, was convicted in November. Prosecutors had said Davis violated state law by not telling a dozen sex partners about his HIV status or lying to them. Davis told the judge Monday that he was a “sex addict’’ and that his addiction grew worse when he lost his dream of becoming a professional wrestler after getting the HIV test results. He said sex addiction is probably the worst addiction anyone could have. “Drugs and alcohol are terrible, but sex is something everybody wants,’’ he said.

U.S. Custom and Border Protection agents say Michael Babatune Ayodele, 19, from Queens, N.Y. passed 55 thumb-sized pellets while being questioned during a secondary inspection. Ayodele arrived Jan. 16 aboard a flight from Nigeria via Kenya and Zurich, Switzerland. Customs officers detected inconsistencies with Ayodele’s story about allegedly visiting family in Nigeria. While being questioned, Ayodele asked to use the bathroom, which is where he passed the heroin-filled pellets. Officers took Ayodele to a local hospital where he passed an additional 31 pellets, also filled with heroin. The 86 pellets had a combined weight of 1,089 grams, or more than 2 pounds, 6 ounces, and an approximate street value of about $78,000.

This conceptual design titled the FleshliPad Holder, melds the Fleshlight device to a rubber housing for the Apple iPad (or alternative tablet) allowing the cumsumer to interactively reach self-gratification with various pre-recorded multimedia (photograph, video or animation) designed specifically for the tablet-penis interface. Thanks Baller

This man brings a whole new meaning to the mile “high” club. Adam Blumenkranz, a 42-year-old LA man, was arrested Monday for allegedly smoking pot mid-flight in a JetBlue airplane bathroom, KTLA reports. Flight attendants became suspicious when Blumenkranz dropped a clear plastic bag in the cabin, reports the Associated Press. When he emerged from the lavatory, a “strong smell of marijuana” emerged with him. The plane was flying from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. to Newark, N.J. Police met Blumenkranz at the terminal gate in New Jersey and took him into custody, under charges of possession of a controlled dangerous substance and drug paraphernalia. According to KTLA, Blumenkranz told police he believed he had done nothing illegal because he has a medical marijuana card.

In a very short period of time, an enigmatic singer named Lana Del Rey went from complete anonymity to the front page of magazines, not to mention intense internet buzz and an SNL appearance. But along with this (almost literal) overnight success came revelations regarding the rising star: She is a total creation of her record company – Interscope, the same as Lady Gaga. When her previous artist persona named Lizzie Grant became a monumental flop, she underwent intense retooling including: A new name (which was assigned to her by her label), plastic surgery, a new musical style, a new image and a new marketing strategy. The same way Stefani Germanotta was “revamped” to become Lady Gaga – a fake persona that fits the requirements of today’s music industry – Lizzie Grant was revamped as Lana Del Rey. Will this alter-persona be used to push the Illuminati agenda in the future?

Marine to serve no time in Iraqi killings case

A Marine sergeant who led a squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis avoided serving any time Tuesday for his role in one of the darkest chapters of the Iraq war, winning leniency through a plea deal that carried no real punishment beyond a reduction in rank. Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones said he did not realize until after he recommended that Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich serve three months in the brig that his hands were tied by a deal that prevented any jail time.

This picture was shared on Facebook through some of my friends. I am not going to go on and on about this topic. The picture is worth 1,000,000 words. Originally thought to have been shot in a fracking area, of PA, but the story has changed and other sources posted. ***EDIT: Now the story has gotten interesting, and has been changed and sources questioned. I removed the persons name and posted original sources. Apparently the deer was shot in Tenn too, now. This source seem much more credible and has a quote from the hunter.

A labyrinth of mysterious caves has been closed down after its owners finally got sick of them being invaded by a satanic cult. The Caynton Caves, hidden in dense woodland near Wolverhampton, have a rich history stemming back to the 17th century when they were apparently carved out of sandstone by followers of the Knights Templar. In the past, the landowners have tried to be accommodating when sects, good or evil, have asked permission to use the site.

A man who allegedly killed and ate a homeless person traveled to Lynn Haven where he was arrested, Lynn Haven police said Wednesday. Tyree Smith, 34, of Bridgeport, Conn., told a family member that he killed the victim with a hatchet, police wrote in a news release. Smith, who was covered in blood at the time, added that “after he bludgeoned the victim he took pieces of brain matter and his eye, which he consumed,” police said.

The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public. A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979. Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments. The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any ‘inquisitive inquirer’ the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.

In a glowing review of the rising prevalence of high-tech big brother surveillance gadgets in police force use, the Associated Press reports that East Orange, New Jersey plans to cut crime by highlighting suspects with a red-beamed spotlight– before any crime is committed– a “pre-crime” deterrent to be mounted on nearby street lights or other fixtures.

The theft this week of radioactive material from a nuclear power plant under construction in Egypt has highlighted once again the dangers of nuclear looting in countries undergoing social upheaval. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that the material was taken from a laboratory at the El Dabaa nuclear power plant on the country’s Mediterranean coast. “According to the information we have, the items that have gone missing are low-level radioactive sources,” says an IAEA spokesperson.

They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes. But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers? More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler. Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles. Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes. A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool.

Optogenetics is a method of using light to control cells in the brain. It can be used to alter behavior, model diseases, and maybe even one day, deliver drugs right where you need them. And now, it’s wireless! With lasers! With genetic engineering, we can design cells that respond to light (from lasers or LEDs) by activating or deactivating themselves or otherwise changing their functionality. The appeal of using light to alter cells is that we can turn light on and off at the speed of, you know, light, which allows us to keep up with the speeds at which things happen inside our cells. For example, neurons in the brain send signals to other neurons using electric spikes that occur in just a few milliseconds, but with lasers, it’s possible to very precisely control (or disrupt) these messages, and this is what optogenetics is all about.

One in five Americans experienced some sort of mental illness in 2010, according to a new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. About 5 percent of Americans have suffered from such severe mental illness that it interfered with day-to-day school, work or family. Women were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than men (23 percent of women versus 16.9 percent of men), and the rate of mental illness was more than twice as likely in young adults (18 to 25) than people older than 50. About 11.4 million adult Americans suffered from severe mental illness in the past year and 8.7 million adults contemplated serious thoughts of suicide. Among them, more than 2 million made suicide plans and about 1 million attempted suicide.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows. The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Eric Spiegelman put together this amazing stream of 130 photos of Obama posing with dignitaries during this week’s U.N. meetings (long video after the jump). And Obama’s smile never changes. Of course you may suspect some Photoshopping, but Spiegelman defends himself by directing us to the State Department’s flickr site.

New information from Norwegian police has made clear the real scale of a shooting at a youth gathering on Utoya Island in Norway: more than 80 dead and dozens wounded.

­A gunman disguised as a police officer started shooting on Utoya Island just outside Oslo, where youth were attending a Labor Party conference. Many ran for their lives, some jumping into the water in an attempt to reach the mainland. Law enforcement officials say the consequences of the attack are catastrophic: at least 80 lives lost, and dozens more wounded. The police did not rule out that there might be more victims.

Locals who tried to rescue some of the injured claimed they saw dozens of bodies in the water.

Undetonated explosives were also found on the island, where some 700 teenagers had gathered for a political rally.

“ASC [Altered States of Consciousness] are only possible because of a normal waking state of consciousness. I propose that it is the role which [endogenous tryptamines including DMT] play in our waking awareness which allows them to play a role in the ASC as well.” (“Endogenous hallucinogens as ligands of the trace amine receptors: A possible role in sensory perception,” J.V. Wallach, Medical Hypotheses 72 (2009) 91–94. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2008.07.052. 94). In this case, if endogenous DMT is in part responsible for how we experience waking life (visually), it follows that altered and normal states of consciousness might not be so radically divergent as we might be led to believe. It also stands to reason that if conscious experience has no intrinsic meaning, altered states of consciousness are no more intrinsically meaningful than waking life.

“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”

Ehlert admits he got drunk aboard the MS Ryndam, broke into a control room and deployed the ship’s anchor early in the morning, Daniel L. Castillo said. “I guess he thought it was a big joke.”

Castillo added, “He’s got a lot of money. It was a silly thing to do. It’s silly. He’s not denying he did it.”

Something happened to Dylan’s Google account, and it’s been disabled. He doesn’t know what happened to the account, and no one at Google with the power to help him is interested in acknowledging the problem or letting him back in to the cloud-based services where all of his correspondence and much of the digital trail from the last few years of his life is stored. Google doesn’t own Twitter, though (yet), and he has taken to Twitter to try to draw attention to his problem and urge anyone who will listen not to trust Google with their digital lives.

Forget a five finger discount — a group of women caught on surveillance video robbing a Florida liquor store used their thighs to carry away the booze they lifted.

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio’s vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush’s unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

To the madcap music of “Yakety Sax,” the video shows correction officers chasing a jumpsuit-clad inmate through Albany County jail corridors and stairways. The action is speeded up, lending the attempted escape the feel of a Keystone Kops comedy.

The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.

Prior to this research, most scientists have believed that the sudden extinction of nearly half of all life forms on the planet was due solely to the emissions from volcanic eruptions that were occurring in what was to become the Atlantic Ocean. Ruhl et al contend that instead, what happened, was that the small amount of atmospheric heating that occurred due to the exhaust from the volcanoes, caused the oceans to warm as well, leading to the melting of ice crystals at the bottom of the sea that were holding on to methane created by the millions of years of decomposing sea life. When the ice crystals melted, methane was released, which in turn caused the planet to warm even more, which led to more methane release in a chain reaction, that Ruhl says, was the real reason for the mass extinction that led to the next phase in world history, the rise of dinosaurs.

Ronald Tackman, a convicted New York robber and notorious prison-breaker famously told police he held up stores like Dunkin’ Donuts just blocks from home because he was “lazy,” The New York Post reported. But the Upper East Side stick-up artist was no slouch when it came to his elaborate escapes.

Tackman last gave law enforcement the slip in 2009, when he was transported to court from Riker’s Island wearing a three-piece suit but no metal bracelets. The uncuffed criminal strolled out after noticing the door to the 12th floor holding cell was open. He found his way to the lobby and was shown the door by an officer who mistook him for a lawyer, The Post notes. Thanks Nico Dios

Just how did the term “Duck and Cover” become universal shorthand for the paranoid excesses of the Cold War and for every geo-political panic attack since? How did the image of a pith-helmet-wearing cartoon turtle named Bert become as lasting a symbol of this dark era as the yellow and black fallout shelter signs that still adorn many buildings around the United States?

Members of a tagging crew allegedly responsible for more than 1,600 pieces of graffiti vandalism were arrested Wednesday by authorities serving search warrants at houses in cities across southwest Los Angeles County.

Eight people, including one juvenile, were charged with causing more than $100,000 in vandalism to schools and Metro bus and rail systems, according to a report from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. All are alleged members of the ASC — Art Sex Crime — tagging crew. Thanks Brendan Donnelly

✦ Science and religion: God didn’t make man; man made gods

Scientists have so far identified about 20 hard-wired, evolved “adaptations” as the building blocks of religion. Like attachment, they are mechanisms that underlie human interactions: Brain-imaging studies at the National Institutes of Health showed that when test subjects were read statements about religion and asked to agree or disagree, the same brain networks that process human social behavior — our ability to negotiate relationships with others — were engaged.

Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits. The rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, or the doctrinal battles between Protestant and Catholic reflect our “groupish” tendencies.

Police said they spotted Dunn and Jefferson sitting at the playground, the young children on the ground next to them. As officers approached them, police said they spotted an empty 40-ounce bottle of Steel Reserve beer on the ground beside the boy. They said a baby bottle next to the baby contained a dark liquid that smelled strongly of an alcohol beverage. Dunn was identified as the children’s mother.

Police said witnesses told them that Jefferson had handed the bottle of beer to the boy and ordered him to chug it. When he had finished it police said Jefferson called the boy an alcoholic.

Both children were taken to Bridgeport Hospital where police said both the boy and girl tested positive for alcohol and the 10-month-old also had cocaine in her system. While being examined, police said the 4-year-old told a social worker he likes, “Natural Ice beer, Budweiser beer, but didn’t like the taste of Dog-Bite beer.”

Norway’s Ministry of Finance announced that the Norway Oil Fund divested from Africa-Israel Investments and Danya Cebus Ltd. on Monday.

The reason given is the companies’ construction in the West Bank.

The Norwegian Finance Ministry said, “The ethics council stresses that construction of settlements in the occupied territories violates the decision of the Geneva convention regarding defense of civilians during war time. Several decisions of the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have reached the conclusion that construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories is prohibited.”

What if you were chatting with someone on OKCupid and they’re all like “I love kids too!” and then they showed up on your first face-to-face date wearing one of these shirts? Would you smooch them anyway? I’d at least think about it… Hey, it’s hard out there for a single lady! Thanks Carlen Altman.

Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose.

“What kind of a society are we creating here?” asked civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate, who along with the ACLU fears police abuse. “There comes a point where the surveillance is so pervasive and total that it’s a misnomer to call a society free any longer.”